Flash Lite™ tutorial series: part 3 creating dynamic animations using phone data

Part 3 of our Flash Lite™ tutorial series for Sony Ericsson mobile phones guides you through how to use phone data to create dynamic animations for the W850 Walkman® phone. This tutorial outlines how to make a simple clock animation, using the system time from the phone, and then continues by exploring how these variables can be used to create time reactive content such as animations that change throughout the day.

Download Part 3: creating dynamic Flash Lite animations using phone data>>

This tutorial series is authored by Chris Petty, Communications Director at BlueskyNorth Ltd, a Smashing Ideas company, who also wrote the "Getting started with Adobe Flash Lite 1.1 tutorial" published on Developer World in August 2006.

In case you missed them, part 1 of this tutorial series gives some general getting started tips, presents the role of Adobe's Device Central CS3 software and explains how to maximize vector graphics in Flash Lite 1.1 and part 2 takes you through a Flash Lite animated wallpaper project for the Sony Ericsson W610 and W850 Walkman phones, identifying and addressing some development challenges and outlines how to make the best use of Adobe® Device Central CS3.

- Download part 1: creating efficient graphics for Adobe Flash Lite>>
- Download part 2: Developing effective Flash Lite projects for Sony Ericsson phones using Adobe Device Central>>

Part 3: creating dynamic Flash Lite animations using phone data
To get the most out of this tutorial, Chris Petty advises that you will need to have Adobe Flash CS3 Professional with Adobe Device Central installed, making sure that you have the latest Device Profile pack.

Creating a simple Flash Lite clock
The first step is to create a simple analog clock face. Chris Petty outlines how to use ActionScript and FS2Commands, giving you instructions and code snippets, to make a Flash Lite movie that checks the current time on the phone and sets the clock hands in the correct positions.

Testing the movie
Chris Petty then explains how to test this movie on the W850 mobile phone using Adobe Device Central, making sure that the content type is set to "Wallpaper". This step allows you to see that the clock hands take up positions representing the time shown in the Device Status box.

Taking this further
The first part of the tutorial deals with creating a specific interface (a clock) designed to display a specific piece of information (the time) in a very standard way. Chris Petty then takes things to the next step by using these variables to control more complex animations.

Now we can create an animation using time variables to reflect the time of day via environmental change. While retaining the analog clock face from the first animation, we now add and control the sun/moon as they move throughout the day and the color of the sky.